I always wondered what would have happened if the south hadn't fired on Fort Sumter.

I assume Lincoln would have still wanted to use troops but if the south didn't give him a reason by attacking would he have had the same success?

If they can show a little patience and kick the can down the road what's Lincoln's play?

If he calls for troops and the south hasn't attacked does Kentucky leave? Does Maryland throw more of a fit than they did?

I don't have the answer but it seems like the Fort Sumter attack stirred people up more than they already were.

Nagler said:

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If they can show a little patience and kick the can down the road what's Lincoln's play?

If he calls for troops and the south hasn't attacked does Kentucky leave? Does Maryland throw more of a fit than they did?

I don't have the answer but it seems like the Fort Sumter attack stirred people up more than they already were.

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His plan was to result and reinforce the federal forts still in Union possession and work on building out the blockade. If Sumter isn't the trigger, then it may be a state like Kentucky or Missouri, where split sentiment leads to violence which leads to both sides getting drawn in. That scenario would have likely been worse for the Confederacy as it would have made negotiations with Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee more thorny given their own large unionist populations.

Langenator said:

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The best course of action for the South might well have been not to secede at all. The slave states would have been outnumbered (Oregon and Nevada were always going to be free states, along with all of the territory north of Kansas) and thus outvoted in Congress and unable to elect an explicitly pro-slavery president, but the Northern states would have never been able to get past the 3/4 of the total number of states hurdle to pass an abolition amendment to the Constitution.

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Could they have gotten a sufficient majority in the Senate, though, to make it illegal without making it unConstitutional? Isn't that what the southern states were afraid of?

Besides the abolitionist's, I wonder how much the financiers forced Lincoln's hand to take action? The Southern plantations were on the hook to Wall Street for $200M ($6.6 billion today). I imagine family pressure was a factor for Abe and gave him pause in sending in the army. His brother-in-law Benjamin Helm, was a Confederate brigadier general and eventually the commander of the 1st Kentucky 'Orphan' Brigade until his death at Chickamauga.

During the secession crisis and even after the firing on Ft. Sumter, NYC mayor Fernando Wood tried to make the city a neutral city that could trade with both parties. Once the troops started getting called up and going to war his idea fell by the wayside.

Jabin said:

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Langenator said:

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The best course of action for the South might well have been not to secede at all. The slave states would have been outnumbered (Oregon and Nevada were always going to be free states, along with all of the territory north of Kansas) and thus outvoted in Congress and unable to elect an explicitly pro-slavery president, but the Northern states would have never been able to get past the 3/4 of the total number of states hurdle to pass an abolition amendment to the Constitution.

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Could they have gotten a sufficient majority in the Senate, though, to make it illegal without making it unConstitutional? Isn't that what the southern states were afraid of?

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A majority free state/free soil/anti-slavery Congress and President could take steps that would greatly weaken the institution of slavery, and cause slaves themselves to become less valuable.

- Ban slavery in the territories. This was a central plank of the Republican platform in both 1856 and 1860.
- Repeal the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which the Northern states hated) and replace it with a federal version of the 'personal liberty' laws enacted by many northern states, which placed the burden of proof on the slave catcher to prove that the alleged fugitive slave that he had apprehended was, in fact, an escaped slave
- Possibly even enact a federal ban on the interstate slave trade, and possibly even interstate transport of slaves. I'm not sure how expansive the interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause was in the mid-19th century.

The two major categories of capital investment in the South, especially in the cotton states, was in land and slaves. Cotton land was a continuously depreciating asset, because cotton exhausted the soil. So without new land to open and exploit, they would eventually run out of land to grow cotton. (There were no chemical fertilizers yet, and George Washington Carver hadn't figured out how to use nitrogen-fixing crops to renew the soil.) And if the land to grow the cotton ran out, the value of the slaves would crash. In combination, this could potentially wipe out much of the net wealth of the South.

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It was cultural in nature.

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Interesting. I wonder why that was? What caused the Carolinas to be different than, say, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama? I can see Georgia being different because of its heritage as a dumping ground for criminals, but the Carolinas?

Or was it the atrocities themselves during the Revolutionary War that created that particular culture?

Also, I have some vague sense that atrocities occurred in New York as well. That is, hangings by each side of the other. Is that not correct, or just not to the degree of the Carolinas?

Rabid Cougar said:

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aalan94 said:

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A lot of good things mentioned here. Something to keep in mind is that Lincoln, who was from a border region, thought he knew the south and he was convinced that the poor whites would not fight, so he would face a bunch of wanna-be generals with no troops. He didn't think the causes of secession were serious, nor did he think the people of the south were really all worked up as the more extreme elements were. So he seriously misjudged what he was getting into.

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All he had to do was remember where the true civil war took place during the Revolution. Some of the worst atrocities of the revolution took place in the Carolinas; also the hot bed of the secessionist movement. It was cultural in nature.

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Have you read HW Brands new book over this subject?

Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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aalan94 said:

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A lot of good things mentioned here. Something to keep in mind is that Lincoln, who was from a border region, thought he knew the south and he was convinced that the poor whites would not fight, so he would face a bunch of wanna-be generals with no troops. He didn't think the causes of secession were serious, nor did he think the people of the south were really all worked up as the more extreme elements were. So he seriously misjudged what he was getting into.

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All he had to do was remember where the true civil war took place during the Revolution. Some of the worst atrocities of the revolution took place in the Carolinas; also the hot bed of the secessionist movement. It was cultural in nature.

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Have you read HW Brands new book over this subject?

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No I haven't.

Rabid Cougar said:

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aalan94 said:

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A lot of good things mentioned here. Something to keep in mind is that Lincoln, who was from a border region, thought he knew the south and he was convinced that the poor whites would not fight, so he would face a bunch of wanna-be generals with no troops. He didn't think the causes of secession were serious, nor did he think the people of the south were really all worked up as the more extreme elements were. So he seriously misjudged what he was getting into.

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All he had to do was remember where the true civil war took place during the Revolution. Some of the worst atrocities of the revolution took place in the Carolinas; also the hot bed of the secessionist movement. It was cultural in nature.

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Some of my ancestors where hillbillies in the Carolinas during the Revolution. There was A LOT of raiding and hanging going on. Most of the fighting there was Patriot militia v Tory Militia - or neighbor v neighbor.

One of my ancestors was hanged during it all - which led to the family moving west after the war.

Very, very interesting. I wonder if anyone's taken a deep dive into the politics of the Carolinas right before the Civil War and the Scots' role in those politics? I also wonder why the Scots who lived in other states didn't take the same view towards the war? That is, I believe that a lot of Scots settled in the Shenandoah and what is today West Virginia and East Tennesse, but they were very anti-South and pro-Union. Also, many of the merchants of Virginia were of Scottish origin yet they were not particularly pro-South.

I wonder if the difference could be that many of the Carolina Scots were slave owners, but those elsewhere were not?

Rabid Cougar said:

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Jabin said:

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Quote:

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It was cultural in nature.

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Interesting. I wonder why that was? What caused the Carolinas to be different than, say, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama? I can see Georgia being different because of its heritage as a dumping ground for criminals, but the Carolinas?

Or was it the atrocities themselves during the Revolutionary War that created that particular culture?

Also, I have some vague sense that atrocities occurred in New York as well. That is, hangings by each side of the other. Is that not correct, or just not to the degree of the Carolinas?

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One word - Scots. The English dumped lots of them in the Carolina's.
Very clannish and adverse to authoritarian governments. Mix in English immigrants/loyalist and the British Army and you have everything you need to settle old grudges and create new ones. They didn't bother with hangings. It was kill everyone and everything on the farm and then burn every to the ground. Lots of tit for tat.

They won out in the 1780's and their kinfolk were still around in the 1850's.

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Do you distinguish between Scots-Irish and Scots? If so, what are the differences you notice once they're in America?

Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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Jabin said:

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Quote:

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It was cultural in nature.

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Interesting. I wonder why that was? What caused the Carolinas to be different than, say, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama? I can see Georgia being different because of its heritage as a dumping ground for criminals, but the Carolinas?

Or was it the atrocities themselves during the Revolutionary War that created that particular culture?

Also, I have some vague sense that atrocities occurred in New York as well. That is, hangings by each side of the other. Is that not correct, or just not to the degree of the Carolinas?

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One word - Scots. The English dumped lots of them in the Carolina's.
Very clannish and adverse to authoritarian governments. Mix in English immigrants/loyalist and the British Army and you have everything you need to settle old grudges and create new ones. They didn't bother with hangings. It was kill everyone and everything on the farm and then burn every to the ground. Lots of tit for tat.

They won out in the 1780's and their kinfolk were still around in the 1850's.

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Do you distinguish between Scots-Irish and Scots? If so, what are the differences you notice once they're in America?

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I don't distinguish between them.

gigemhilo said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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aalan94 said:

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A lot of good things mentioned here. Something to keep in mind is that Lincoln, who was from a border region, thought he knew the south and he was convinced that the poor whites would not fight, so he would face a bunch of wanna-be generals with no troops. He didn't think the causes of secession were serious, nor did he think the people of the south were really all worked up as the more extreme elements were. So he seriously misjudged what he was getting into.

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All he had to do was remember where the true civil war took place during the Revolution. Some of the worst atrocities of the revolution took place in the Carolinas; also the hot bed of the secessionist movement. It was cultural in nature.

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Some of my ancestors where hillbillies in the Carolinas during the Revolution. There was A LOT of raiding and hanging going on. Most of the fighting there was Patriot militia v Tory Militia - or neighbor v neighbor.

One of my ancestors was hanged during it all - which led to the family moving west after the war.

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As were mine, but mine stayed and were heavily involved in the second "rebellion" too. Barnwell County.

Great discussion

Jabin said:

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Very, very interesting. I wonder if anyone's taken a deep dive into the politics of the Carolinas right before the Civil War and the Scots' role in those politics? I also wonder why the Scots who lived in other states didn't take the same view towards the war? That is, I believe that a lot of Scots settled in the Shenandoah and what is today West Virginia and East Tennesse, but they were very anti-South and pro-Union. Also, many of the merchants of Virginia were of Scottish origin yet they were not particularly pro-South.

I wonder if the difference could be that many of the Carolina Scots were slave owners, but those elsewhere were not?

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This peaked my curiosity . Turns out that North and South Carolina still have the highest concentration of Scot-Irish ancestry in the US.
(1990 census)

Dang, looks like there's not a single person of Scotch Irish descent in Wisconsin. That's funny.

You really need to deal with the Carolinas separately. South Carolina was the first to secede; North Carolina didn't do so until after Fort Sumter

South Carolina had a much longer and deeper history with slavery than most of the rest of the South, due to the fact that the long staple cotton, which was the only cotton crop until Whitney invented the cotton gin in the 1790s, grew pretty much exclusively in coastal South Carolina. Prior to the Revolution, slaves in NC and Virginia were mostly used for tobacco growing, at a much lower density than in the slave heavy areas of SC.

If memory serves, by 1860, SC actually had more black slaves than free whites. SC also had made a previous attempt to tell the Federal government to sod off, only to be smacked down by President Jackson.

The Scots-Irish in both states were (and are) concentrated mostly in the uplands, and in SC's case, the uplands along the NC state line. But there are a lot more uplands in NC. And some areas of those uplands effectively seceded from NC during the war.

South Carolina made their fortune on rice along the tidal plains and low country. In 1860, SC and MS were the two states with a Black population larger than the white population. Rice and indigo were still very valuable.

I agree with the critique of the ethnic thesis. I don't find anything particularly compelling in the record to justify treating the Scot-Irish as a unique group by the time of the Civil War. Pennsylvania, the Midwest, and Maine/NH had significant Ulster Scot migrations and didn't have similar responses to political issues.

I should note that modern Fayetteville was founded by Highland Scots who remained loyal during the Revolution.